UPDATED, 7 AM: CBS has set Sunday, April 3, 2022 for its inaugural broadcast of the CMT Music Awards. The ceremony will air live from Nashville from 8-11 PM ET/delayed PT, CBS said Thursday. The move follows ViacomCBS’ recent announcement that it was moving the annual country music awards show from cabler CMT to its broadcast sister.
The company announced CMT will host week-long special programming and events leading up to the main event, “capped by exclusive director’s cut airings of the CMT Music Awards later on CMT and various ViacomCBS platforms.”
PREVIOUS: The CMT Music Awards, which have been running in various forms since the 1960s, are to premiere live on CBS in 2022.
In the latest example of corporate synergy, the broadcast network will become the home of the event, which has awarded artists such as Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift in recent years.
The move gives CBS another live awards ceremony; despite falling numbers across awards events, they are generally a boon for live ratings.
In 2021, ViacomCBS premiered the event, which is country music’s only entirely fan-voted award show, on CMT as well as sister networks MTV, MTV2, Logo, Paramount Network and TV Land but the move to CBS will significantly expand its reach.
It comes after CBS aired the 56th annual Academy of Country Music Awards in April. Despite being the least watched ACM Awards to date, it still stopped all of broadcast in the demo and drew larger audience than its network competitors combined.
For the 2022 event, CMT will kick off the company’s first ever Country Music Week by hosting week-long special programming and events capped by exclusive director’s cut airings of the CMT Music Awards later on CMT and various ViacomCBS platforms.
The 2021 show was hosted by Kelsea Ballerini and Kane Brown, and featured performances from H.E.R. + Chris Stapleton, Gladys Knight, Mickey Guyton + Breland, and Carrie Underwood, who remains the most-awarded artist in CMT Awards history with 22 wins.
It joins the likes of The Grammy Awards, The Tony Awards and the Kennedy Center Honors on CBS.